Before you begin, be sure to have all the canning tools you’ll need ready. You will need a jar funnel, jar tongs, clean jars, lids and bands, a ladle, colander and several cooking pots.

Rinse or soak (store bought has wax coating) all vegetables, (depends if you grew them organic or store bought) if your soaking about 2 tablespoons of vinegar to a sink, let sit for about 15 mins. Peel and chop ends off the cucumbers and compost ends.

After removing end or bad parts. I had to cut them to a size to fit in the vegetable cutter.

I use a nifty French fry cutter to slice my cucumbers and onion into thin strips. You could do it by hand, or with a mandolin, I did before takes a long time! I was doing a lot of chopping and slicing and dicing and so I bought this and use it practically every day!

I forgot to take pictures of the onion cutting, peel cut off ends, cut in half, place the cut side in the side of the cutter-so the rounded side touches the blade(CAREFULL not to cut yourself, I have its not pretty lol)It will dice and cut them at the same time..

Dice up thestripswith a large knife, then drop them into a large bowl, big enough to hold all the chopped cukes, peppers and onions. Put aside and start chopping the other stuff.

Cut off the tops of the peppers. Remove the stem from the top you just cut off. Slice into strips. And then dice them up.

Don’t forget to throw them stems in your composter.

Toss to mix well, add 2 tablespoons of salt and cover in water., then stir, cover and refrigerate; let stand at least 6 hours or overnight, stirring occasionally, if possible.

Drain well, stirring occasionally to release as much liquid as possible, but do not rinse.

INGREDIENTS: For the Syrup:

Last

1 quart of white or cider vinegar

1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes, or to taste, optional.

4 cups of granulated sugar

2 teaspoons of finely minced garlic

2 tablespoons of mustard seed

2 tablespoons of celery seed

1/2 teaspoon of turmeric

Directions:

In a large pot, mix together the vinegar (white or cider), sugar, garlic, mustard seed, celery seed, and turmeric.

Bring to a boil, stirring regularly until sugar is dissolved.

Add in the drained vegetables and red pepper flakes, if using, return to a boil, reduce to medium and simmer for 30 minutes.

Use a slotted spoon to transfer relish into sterilized jars, leaving head space and top off with syrup, wipe rim of jar clean, then tighten band over to seal.

Seal, refrigerate, or process for canning.

If using standard canning practices process for 15 minutes in a boiling-water canner.

Canning Directions:

Using the jar tongs, lift jar and put into the hot water canner. Cover with lid and boil for 15 minutes.

When 10 minutes are up, carefully remove lid, then use jar tongs to lift each jar, wipe to dry and clean , place them in a area where they can cool overnight.

Cover jars with a towel to prevent them from cooling too fast.

In the morning, press the top of each jar and make sure the vacuum seal worked.

If the lid pops up and down, boil again in the hot water canner for another 10 minutes, or put in the fridge and eat it up!

The relish tastes great on hot dogs, mixed into tuna fish sandwiches, potato salads… whatever you can image.

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We received 3 bags of onions. And I hate to waste anything. As my grandparents used to say “Waste not Want not”.

So I needed to dice up 3 bags by hand. Um NOT gonna happen. So I began to read on line of easy ways to do it. And all were cut by hand. Pfft.

open bagged onion

I did see some pictures of machines that do cut them, but most were restaurant ones, needless to say expensive. I did see a photo of my potato cutter. So with alittle more research my quest was complete.

Learning to do things outside the box I’m learning as I age.

Today I have found a new use for our potatoes slicer, It also dices onions.

Vegetable slicer! A.k.a Potato slicer.

So I started by removing the outer skins and composting them.

Slicing off the tops, bottoms

Removing the brown paper like skin

Next cut the top and bottoms off, and remove the paper like brown skin.

Remember to compost those to!

Nice and clean Onion

The start of dicing them onions up

Now don’t they look pretty, too bad they don’t smell pretty!

Make sure to put them flat side up, not on the rounded side. This makes a difference between dicing and slicing the onion. As usual I learned the hard way on this experiment!

Before cutting the onion, I pulled out my silicone mat for baking.

Perfectly diced onion

Wont slide on counter

Turns out its great on the counter for quick mess clean up, and also keeps a grip on the counter, but you don’t want sharp objects to make contact on it. Plus you can fill it up and roll it, and slide the items right to where you want them. Like on a cookie sheet for freezing!

So next I have to find room in my freezer for them..Send me luck Ill need it!